Tag: pleck

#365daysofbiking Not forgotten:

December 6th – In an otherwise unremarkable, workaday wall  on a main road in Place, Walsall, one of the UK’s many hundreds of industrial memorials to the lost employees in the Great War.

The fourteen lost souls listed on the memorial worked for the Cyclops Foundry which was near where the plaque is now, and has long since passed into history – but the original memorial was saved and restored by the NHS, who operate Walsall Manor Hospital, opposite, not once, but twice: They refurbished the memorial in 1989, and replaced it totally in 2002.

I’m glad it survived and still stands today, bearing witness to those lives lost, and it’s good to see that 100 years on, people still place crosses here to remember them.

#365daysofbiking Wellness:

November 1st – I’m running behind at the moment, please bear with me. 

I had to go to the hospital for an appointment, and went from work mid morning. I was apprehensive, tense, and sad. I looked back down the Walsall Canal from where I came and noticed the curious, dull sunlight on the yellowing trees.

I felt the very chill of autumn in my bones there and then. However beautiful, autumn is always, always melancholy.

#365daysofbiking Frustration:

October 25th – There was a beautiful sunset as I left work. I saw it through the frosted skylights at work; they’d got a lovely pink colour which signified something interesting was happening.

The trouble is with where I work, there aren’t many decent spots to get the sunset from.

Getting on a turn of speed, I managed to make old favourite the Kings Hill cellphone mast, still trading data with the ether against a glorious sky, and over the ruins of James Bridge Copper Works at Alumwell.

It’s always annoying to see a good sunset yet not be somewhere with a decent view of it…

#365daysofbiking Spot on:

October 12th – On the way to work in the season of the storm living up to it’s name: torrential, driving rain and a bastard of a headwind forged on satan’s back step.

I took the canal at my earliest opportunity to avoid the madness of the traffic, and as I passed the bank where the fly agaric normally grow in large numbers but has been barren so far this season, a glint of bright red caught my eye.

The size of a dinner plate, it must be the largest, most perfect specimen I’ve ever seen.

Despite the rain, there was brightness. There always is, if you keep an eye open for it.

July 10th – This one has puzzled me. An unknown family of swans has appeared in Pleck, Walsall on the canal near the Rollingmill Industrial Estate.

Mum, Dad and six cygnets (a smaller, slightly runty looking one was hiding behind the weed on the right) were sunning themselves and preening at the back of a factory, while a man worked noisily through the door in the workshop behind.

I don’t know this year of any local family with six surviving chicks, and the adults don’t seem to be ringed.

They look in rude health though, and weren’t at all skittish.

Wonder if they’re now resident or just passing through? Where are they from, any ideas people?

June 27th – Since we’re in high, hot summer we’re now in a phase of darker flowers – purples, reds, dark blues. And that means the thistles are coming out.

Spotted flowering on industrial wasteland in Pleck, this gorgeous thistle was alive with tiny back bugs.

I immediately felt sorry for the plant. But who knows? They may have been doing it good…

Fascinating, all the same.

June 26th – Another hot and sunny day, and on the way to work, it was clear that fish has been breeding successfully in the canal at Pleck: Looking into the green water under Scarborough Road bridge, tends of thousands of tiny fry had had hatched. Further up the canal, larger fish were heading in that direction, one presumes fo lunch.

Who’d ever have thought these canals would be so green, beautiful and full of life?

May 14th – At Bentley Bridge, a proud new family – mum and dad and five cute goslings.

The parents hissed at me to be careful, but were tolerant as I greeted and watched the brood they were clearly very proud of. The goslings just acted like I wasn’t there.

A delightful encounter on an urban, industrial Black Country canal bank, and one of the reasons this place is so dear to me.